ALEXANDRIA, LA---The #3 seeded Mustangs took on the #6 seeded Texas A&M-Texarkana Eagles in the quarterfinals of the 2020 RRAC Tournament on Thursday night. Both teams were looking for their first conference tournament victory as USW is 0-5 in their history and Texarkana was playing in their first tournament game in their inaugural season. 

Despite a double-double from senior Joshua Harris, the Mustangs fell 69-63.

"Not the way we wanted the season to end but I'm proud of the guys and their effort" said Head Coach Cory Hitchcock following the game. " We battled and fought the entire game. It's hard to win games when you can't put the ball in the hoop. We had our chances during the game, but I felt like we shot ourselves in the foot too many times. Texarkana did a great job taking away the paint from us and we settled for a lot of early shots instead of making them work. Missed free throws and turnovers hurt us as well. They had 18 points off of our turnovers and against a good defensive team, it's important we value every possession. I won't let this loss take away from the great year we had. We tripled our wins from last year, finished 3rd in conference when we were picked to be last, made the conference tournament, and we built a culture of toughness and hard work."

Collin Hill led the team in scoring with 18 points all coming from behind the 3PT line as the junior was 6-7 from three. Joshua Harris was the other Mustang in double-figures as he scored 14 points on 4-12 shooting & 6-6 from the free throw line. The Mustangs shot only 35.5% (22-62) from the field and 55% (10-18)  from the FT line. Akeem Black finished his Mustang career with 9 points in 28 minutes of play. Black also had 3 assists, 2 rebounds ad 1 steal. Derrick Hall logged 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals in 25 minutes of play. Senior Jaylen Taulton scored a career-high 6 points in his final game in a Mustang uniform. 

"I'm thankful for the 3 seniors we have this year. Joshua, Akeem and Jaylen did a great job leading this team and really helped us change the mindset of the guys within the program. We are pretty young so I'm excited to see what we do next year. The guys got to taste the post-season and hopefully this will motivate them to get in the gym and work on their game. I would like to thank all the fans for their support all year long. We couldn't have done it without you. I would also like to thank the administration team for believing in me and allowing me to coach these young men. It's a blessing to be the coach here at USW." said Coach Hitchcock. 

The Mustangs finish 16-13 on the season and had 3 players earn All-Conference honors.